1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to electronic data processing. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to methods, computer program products and computer systems for document encryption.
2. Background Information
W3C XML Encryption provides a framework for encrypting/decrypting parts of an XML document, where a part can be in the range from the whole document to the content of an element. An XML encryption tag surrounds the parts that need to be encrypted by a corresponding server. XML Encryption also describes how to decrypt the encrypted data. XML Encryption can be applied to any Web resource including non-XML content. Privacy policies may be applied to Web resources through the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P). For instance, P3P can describe that information retrieved from the client is to be shared with commercial partners.
JCETaglib is a set of Open Source JSP tags, communicating with Sun Microsystem's JCE (Java Cryptographic Extensions) library to bring encryption to JSP applications. JCETaglib is based on the JCE java library from Sun Microsystems and allows one to define which part of an HTML document should be encrypted. Encrypt JCETags can be used to describe which clear text within a document is to be encrypted and XML can be used to describe how to decrypt data with a EncryptedData tag.
However, known encryption tools suffer from several drawbacks. For example, these tools do not allow one to describe for a client device which parts of a document need to be encrypted after the document has been processed by the client and before the data is sent back to the server. Further, these tools do not address the issue of pagination. For example, typically, a document sent to a device needs to be paginated according to the display area of the device. Mobile devices with limited display areas typically require the document to be displayed on multiple pages if the document does not fit into a single page. If the document includes sensitive portions, the whole document is encrypted when using prior art encryption. The encrypted document cannot be paginated and, therefore, once the document is received by the client, it cannot be opened and processed at the client side.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improved methods, software applications and computer systems for document encryption. There is also a need for such methods and systems that are capable of addressing one or more of the drawbacks of known encryption tools, such as those identified above.
The above description is based on the knowledge of the present inventors and not necessarily that known in the art.